International council tackles UK power-sharing challenges

Sir Keir Starmer chaired the first meeting of the new National Regional Council in Edinburgh.

The conference brought together the Prime Minister and the leaders of the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the mayors of England.

Sharing power between Britain’s different governments was bound to create some tension.

Anyone who thought it would always be a creative and constructive force was probably an idealist, if not a naive one.

Over the years there have been some bitter disputes between the devolved governments and British departments.

Fights over funding are perhaps the most common, with ministers from Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast working together to provide joint representation to the Treasury in London.

At times, there were also struggles over where power lay and whether it should change.

The relationship between the Scottish and UK governments can be particularly difficult, particularly during the protracted debate over Brexit and the possibility of a second independence referendum.

Starmer’s New Labor government has promised a reset, and the SNP’s first minister, John Swinney, has also said he is committed to it.

Early signs were encouraging.

Yes, there is disagreement over the UK’s decision to defund the universal winter fuel payment for older people.

But there has also been serious discussion about how governments can work together to secure the future of the huge Grangemouth industrial site.

Just this week, Scottish Treasurer Shona Robison informed the Holyrood Committee that there had been meaningful changes to her pre-Budget consultations with Treasurers.

The first meeting of the National Regional Council will be a further effort to improve the functioning of the government.

Opening the session on Friday morning, the prime minister said the council was “a statement of intent on behalf of myself and the government about how we want to work with you.”

“I think just as important as what we discuss is how we work together and how we work together.

“The UK is really strong and has a lot to offer, especially when it comes to growth and investment, but it’s a bit complicated.”

Former Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray will be appointed as “special envoy to nations and regions” but will not attend the meeting.

Mr Gray took on the role of Sir Keir’s aide when Labor won government in July, but was later replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who led the party’s campaign.

Ms Gray, a former civil servant with 10 years’ behind-the-scenes experience, said her “fiery comments about my position” could be a “distraction” when she steps down.

Some SNP politicians have complained that Scottish cities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen do not have seats of their own.

Labor sources say this is because the SNP has not transferred powers outside of Holyrood to create local leadership in Scotland.

The new council is a far cry from the “strong and legally mandated” institution envisaged by Gordon Brown in his commission on Britain’s future.

It is unclear what kind of decision-making authority they will actually have.

But Downing Street appears keen to avoid giving the impression that the new organization is just a chatterbox.

The inaugural meeting will discuss major investment in renewable energy technology across the UK, ahead of a further investment meeting on Monday.

These networking events are scheduled to be held twice a year.

Prior to the first plenary session, devolved leaders met with the Prime Minister individually and in groups (the so-called “Quad”).

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said he had urged Starmer to push for more public investment when the UK government presents its budget later this month.

Mr Siwiny said he had had “a fruitful conversation with the First Minister on important issues affecting Scotland”.

He added: “This is a welcome opportunity to raise the important issues that will affect Scotland’s future, and central to this is the budget outcome, and the changes to public services and infrastructure to stimulate growth. We need to consider investing in this,” he added. We all want to see it realized within the economy. ”

The first minister also pressed Mr Starmer on a carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) facility in Aberdeenshire, which the UK government has ignored funding for.

If relations between the Holyrood and Westminster governments are better now than they were before the UK general election, it is worth pointing out that the baseline was an all-time low.

As Scottish Secretary, Conservative MP Alistair Jack was quite happy to be seen as a hard-nosed trade unionist who would check the nationalism of the SNP.

He used the UK Internal Market Act, introduced after Brexit, to block the introduction of a bottle deposit scheme in Scotland.

UK ministers also used reserved powers to block Scotland’s gender recognition reform, which was backed by the courts.

SNP ministers branded this an outrageous interference in the exercise of devolved powers.

From Jack’s perspective, he was faced with outrageous overreach by the devolved administrations.

In a separate dispute, British lawyers successfully argued in court that Holyrood cannot hold another independence referendum without government approval.

These clashes soured relations between the Scottish and British governments. It couldn’t have gotten any worse.

There was not a total lack of co-operation between the Conservative government in Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood.

They managed to agree to work together on Freeport and struck a deal to expand Holyrood’s tax and welfare powers after the 2014 independence referendum.

Relations between governments were probably best when the parties in power in Edinburgh and London were the same.

For the first eight years of devolution it was the Labor Party.

As first minister, Jack McConnell was able to secure Holyrood’s role in overseas aid, which was Britain’s responsibility.

There was also a ‘Fresh Talent’ agreement allowing visa extensions for international students graduating in Scotland.

However, there were controversies during that time as well.

When British authorities carried out “dawn raids” to remove “failed asylum seekers”, including children, who had settled in Scotland, the devolved governments objected.

They argued that while immigration, asylum and border control were the UK’s responsibility, this particular policy conflicted with devolution to protect the welfare of children.

There was an understanding for a while, but then a change in British ministers reaffirmed Westminster’s control.

The switch of the Holyrood government from Labor to the SNP in 2007 immediately suggested that levels of friction were likely to increase further.

The SNP’s first minister, Alex Salmond, was furious when Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair struck a prisoner-transfer deal with Gaddafi in the Libyan desert.

This was at a time when the only Libyan prisoner in Scotland was Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, and Scottish ministers were not consulted.

Ultimately, the Salmond government refused to grant a transfer under the agreement, but instead released Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds because he had cancer.

These disputes are now part of Holyrood’s history, but they highlight that there have been, and likely continue to be, tensions in intergovernmental relations.

Starmer and Swinney appear committed to a more constructive relationship.

Maintaining this policy until the next Holyrood election in 2026 will be an even bigger challenge for both parties.